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Most recently the company reported the results of four holes drilled at its Kosovo-based Slivovo joint venture. Its share price closed up 44.44 percent, at $0.13.
At the beginning of 2015, Mark Brown, chairman of Avrupa Minerals (TSXV:AVU), promised that in 2015 his company would put out “lots of results.”
Thus far, he’s been correct — Avrupa has released a steady stream of news since the start of the year, most recently reporting the results of four holes drilled at its Kosovo-based Slivovo joint venture. The holes were completed at the Peshter Gossan target, and according to the company one highlight is hole SLV018, which returned 6.91 g/t gold and 19.19 g/t silver over 125 meters.
While hole SLV017 returned no significant results, the other two holes did. They are as follows:
- 62 meters of 1.59 g/t gold and 15.74 g/t silver in SLV016
- 16 meters of 1.44 g/t gold and 13.08 g/t silver in SLV019
All in all, the company believes that the results, particularly those from hole SLV018, “further demonstrate the continuity of gold mineralization in the core of the Peshter Gossan.”
Results from more holes are pending, Monday’s release states. The company has drilled holes SLV020 through SLV024 at the eastern extension of the Peshter Gossan zone, and has completed holes SLV025 through SLV028 in or close to the main area of the Peshter Gossan zone. Already, samples from holes SLV020 to SLV024 have been sent to the lab.
Further drilling is still to come as well. The current phase of drilling, the third at Slivovo, should be 3,000 meters, and to date only about 1,800 meters have been completed. Ultimately, the plan is to gather enough information to create an initial resource model and calculation, with that information being used to decide whether to progress to “mov[ing] the Slivovo exploration license to a mining license and typical pre-feasibility tasks.”
Prospect generator in action
As mentioned, Slivovo is a joint venture project — Avrupa holds a 49-percent stake in the project, while Byrnecut International holds a 51-percent interest that it gained by spending 1 million euros on exploration.
In a recent interview with the Investing News Network, Brown praised the relationship, noting that one benefit to working with Byrnecut is that it’s a mining contractor. “They build mines, they do planning for them and they put them into production, so they are already asking the kinds of questions like, ‘how would the pit be built? Where would we put the mill? Where would we put tailings?’” he said, adding, “as far as partners go, they are fantastic.”
Besides bringing know-how to the project, Byrnecut is of course bringing funding. It only recently gained its 51-percent stake in Slivovo, but is now working on raising that interest to 75 percent. To do so, it must spend a further 1 million euros on the project.
That, of course, is all part of the prospect generator model, which seems to be receiving more and more praise lately. Fans include Louis James of Casey Research, who said recently, “in the exploration field if you’re not a prospect generator using other people’s money to defray the risk, [then] you’re going to be roadkill. There’s just no way to raise money right now for grassroots projects, the market doesn’t care — you need other people’s money. So the prospect generator model has always made sense, and today we can see why it makes sense.”
Certainly that seems to be holding true for Avrupa. At close of day Monday, Avrupa’s share price was up 44.44 percent, at $0.13. It will certainly be interesting to watch for the conclusion of the current drill program at Slivovo, and for news from Avrupa’s other projects.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Editorial Disclosure: Avrupa Minerals is a client of the Investing News Network. This article is not paid-for content.
Related reading:
Mark Brown of Avrupa Minerals Likes Where the Gold Price is At
Mark Brown of Avrupa Minerals: ‘Lots of Results Coming’ in 2015
